In a previous post I mentioned how the peculiar bourgeois logic of anti-fascism leads leftists to a position of support for the Allied imperialist camp during the Second World War (and for all other capitalist parties, states and movements who oppose “fascism”). In that post I discussed briefly the left’s uncritical support for the brutal USSR, but also promised to say a bit more about why support for the Western Allies against Nazi Germany also amounted to taking sides in a battle between gangster states. I intend to talk about that position in some detail as soon as I finish reading Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke, which I want to review in the context of such comments, but that book is so dull that I can only force myself to read a few pages a week and therefore that post might be a while in coming.
Fortunately, the good fellows at the Socialism or Your Money Back blog — affiliated with the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Movement — have an excellent post about the war crimes of the Western Allies during the invasion of Normandy, an event whose 65th anniversary is being celebrated this week by Sarkozy, Obama, Gordon Brown and Princes Charles. It’s a post and a blog well worth reading.
I’ll conclude with a quote I came across a while ago, one I rather like, even if it’s from an orthodox Bordigist group:
“Fascism is the unscrupulous and extra-legal armed wing of democracy, and democracy is the “velvet glove” of fascism.”
- International Communist Party, “Fascism and Antifascism”